Zero Steps
by Alsheon
Summary: Johnny thought Spider-Man was nothing but a guy running around in spandex, until he changed his opinion... He's annoying and only made things worse. Both opinions were created before he met Spider-Man properly. And when Johnny finally meet and talk properly with the vigilante... Man, how wrong he was. Pre!SpideyTorch


The first impression Johnny ever got towards Spider-Man is, "Ridiculous man running around in spandex, probably worse than the Buggle said". It's a bit hard to not create that opinion when every news about him is filled with bashing and contempt.

Second impression is, "Annoying chatterbox that only made things worse." It's a bit hard to not think so when practically three quarters or more of New York hated the vigilante and how Johnny lost his favorite shirt that day because Spider-Man swung past and a nasty rotten tomato hitted Johnny instead. Why can't that bug kept the rotten to himself?

The third impression is when Johnny truly met Spider-Man, not just seeing him in news, nor only seeing him swinging past. Johnny had been stand up that time and waited below a dangerously unstable building that literally fell after a terrorize bomb, Johnny would have suffer several broken ribs and bones that day had the vigilante did not sweep through and tossed Johnny to safety. When Sue came along with the rest of Fantastics, fussing over him and asking about his condition also the situation before they came, Johnny told them the things he knew and his opinion about Spider-Man, "I think that guy is pretty cool."

The fourth impression was when Johnny was in a date with another blonde chick in an amusement park when the entire place is screaming in panic about a bloody random crazy villain who called himself Vulture, Johnny had flamed on and flew to see just which bloody villain who decided to ruin his date for the sixty seventh times only to see the bloody giant ferris wheel is _falling._ Or supposedly falling because it stopped in about forty-five degree from its original position.

Upon closer inspection, Johnny saw so many webs on them, just how many superhero who actually used webs? And upon an even closer inspection, Johnny found Spider-Man trying to prolong the inevitable, thick threads of webs in his right hand is pulling the ferris wheel whereas his left hand is holding to another set of web threads which clung tightly to another big steel monumen nearby, which will either be uprooted or break in a matter of minutes.

Johnny did the only thing he could do, "Dude! Can you hold on a bit longer? I'll evacuate those inside!" Johnny yelled and Spider-Man nodded his head furiously.

"Please!" Not having the energy or freedom to really speak, Spider-Man only yelled that one word and Johnny already flew to the ferris wheel, one by one he visited the cabins, taking those who are trapped and get them down as much as he could with his fastest speed. When it was the time to evacuate the last cabin, the ferris wheel made a very loud sound and it suddenly creaked down, hitting Johnny's shoulder, Johnny immediately retreated out of instinct before recalling there's another family inside the cabin.

"Hang on!" Johnny hastily bailed the last cabin which had two people in it, a mother and her daughter. When he carried them both, the ferris wheel completely gave up and Johnny saw from the distance that Spider-Man's webs snapped. He quickly flew away from the falling wheel .

After getting the mother and daughter pair to safety, Johnny was already welcomed by bunch of reporters who came as fast as they could when they heard there were some villains wreaking havoc in amusement park and was even more fired off when they saw the ferris wheel was falling and there was a flaming human figures flying here and there to get everyone out.

Johnny stayed for a while to chatter and pose for them, it was... no more than ten minutes, honest. After satisfied with his fill of attention (also the polices are coming), Johnny flew back to where Spider-Man is, expecting the vigilante is already gone and then he could investigate some things here before the police seals this place, so he could answer it when his sister demanded how this could happened when she read the headline tomorrow... or tonight, Internet has never been kind after all.

But the vigilante was still there, some parts of his costume were torn, wounds that had start to to heal could be seen through the torn part of the suits. Johnny stood there, seeing how Spider-Man overturned some debris, shaking and stumbling. The first thing Johnny thought was that Spider-Man is searching for a lead, before he dismissed it as ridiculous and a bit over the top.

The second thing Johnny thought was, he might lost something around here. And after a round of stupid guesses, Johnny finally found the most visible answer, "I've got everyone out."

The vigilante's shoulders tensed as he whirled around to look at Johnny. Johnny wondered if he just noticed him...

Then the vigilante's shoulder slumped as he exhaled and stumbled to lean over one of the debrises, "Thank God..." He sounded truly grateful for that.

"You think I would left one out?" Johnny crossed his arms.

Spider-Man shook his head, "No.. It was just... My webshooter broke suddenly, I was afraid you didn't get the chance to save some..."

Then, Johnny noticed the broken watch-like device around Spider-Man's right wrist, huh? So that's where those webs came from? "You did great, dude," That's giving an understatement. The dude freaking paused the falling of a ferris wheel which is like... several tons. Great was an understatement.

"It was my fault in the first place..." Spider-Man sighed.

"What? You broke the ferris wheel? How?" Johnny stared at the vigilante.

"No, I didn't. It was Vulture, I was chasing after him and he knew I wouldn't let anyone hurt... or die, if I could help it, he destroyed the control and the chords of the thing," Spider-Man spilled out.

"... That's messed up."

"Yeah, one more messed up guy in my list," Spider-Man straightened as the police sirens blaring from the distance, "I gotta go, don't want those guys to start shooting me when I only have one sharpshooter. See you around, Human Torch!" Spider-Man mock saluted and ran off.

Johnny stared at the retreating vigilante for a while before he looked around the debris. Ten minutes... That guy wasted ten minutes of his time to run away for searching if there's anymore victim trapped inside.

Johnny Storm sighed as he sat on one debris and waited for the police. Just for this time, he would shield that guy, count it as _respect._

* * *

They met and encountered each other frequently after that, New York is not by any mean a big city for superheroes to not meet and in between this moment, Johnny realized how Spidey is... not really idolized by people much.

Everytimes he swung past, many people would grab the first ugly things they saw and threw it at him, rotten vegetables, old shoe, cans, old newspaper, even broken glass bottles. The most the vigilante would do is complain about New Yorkers' craziness while munching on sandwich Johnny would sometimes treated him with.

Though, Johnny could hear how lonely and sad he was behind that faked careless and playful complaints. It must be hard to do your best but no one even appreciate it. Johnny didn't know how that feel though, everything he does is always appreciated by many people... except maybe in his family, no one appreciate him in there... He stood corrected, he knew the feeling of being unappreciated.

"Spidey!" Human Torch landed before the burning building and saw the familiar-lookng vigilante is doing his best to get the people inside out.

"Torch! Can you deflame this place?! Thank you!" Spider-Man yelled before ducking inside again, presumably to see if there's anyone else deeper in the building.

"Get out of there, I'll get the job done!" When he received no response, Johnny rolled his eyes and held out his hands, sucking the heat and fire off of the burning building, not a moment later, the Arachnid flipped out with a little boy in arms.

"There you go," Spider-Man sighed.

"Freeze!" Suddenly a barrage of polices ran in and aimed at Spider-Man. "You're under arrest, Spider-Man."

"Oh man, come on

* * *

The last but best impression which nailed Johnny's opinion of Spider-Man as "Damn it, they couldn't be any more wrong. He's freaking cool, I'll fight those who disagreed" was when New York was brewing in the tense conflict of Iron Man and Captain America.

In Civil War, you're either ally or enemy. There are no in between. X-men had tried to play neutral as they resent to be involved in the conflict of humans, but even then, they were still pulled in as some of their younger members started taking sides that even those who are truly neutral needed to get trapped inside the War.

Johnny didn't see any sign of Spider-Man when the Civil War started, nor when it broke out into all out war. He half-expected the masked vigilante to show up in Iron Man's side, if there's anyone who could found secret identies it could only be Tony Stark. After all, some vigilantes who wanted to stay out of this got pulled in to join his hide, such as Daredevil. The poor guy looked even angrier than he usually is.

But Spider-Man never did appeared. It's either he hid extremely well or... he hid extremely well...

And then one day, when the war was still going on heatedly. A flash of red and blue landed in the middle of the chaos and started yelling. The one who Johnny waited for days finally appeared, tense, angry, _furious,_ Johnny was surprised to see him angry. Because from what he gathered, Spider-Man is not the type who get angry. Agitated and frustrated? Yes. Angry? Not so much.

"I only left for _one week._ One week and my moderately safe and friendly neighbourhood turned into a war zone?! What the fuck is wrong with you people?!" Spider-Man cursed loudly which made several of them blinked.

"Lang-"

"Shut up!" Spider-Man cutted the infamous Captain America off and the captain actually did shut up, not without giving a disapproving gaze towards Spider-Man of course.

"I'm not done yet! I'm angry, I have the right to be angry when things I've kept safe were destroyed in a mere _one week vacation_ I took."

"This wouldn't happen if those rogues agreed to us and move on to make the world the better place," Iron Man said lowly.

"Tony, the Superhero Registration Act is tying the freedom for heroes to act according their conscience, we can't just wait for order before acting."

"Conscience? You're talking about conscience when you hid the truth from me? That's so funny, Steve."

"Tony, I-"

"Shut up! Shut the fuck up!" Spider-Man once again yelled, interrupting the leader of both sides' argument. "I don't care who started it first! For all I know you guys did the job to ruin this place. I don't care about the backstory! Who cares about the registration act?! What I care about is why are you guys _ruining the city?!_ "

Everyone looked at Spider-Man, no one attack him because they're still assessing at which side he's on. He dissed the Registration act once, but he also cutted off Captain America twice, both of which were enough to get in either sides' good book.

"You guys were heroes, supposedly _heroes_. Yet what are you guys doing? Look around! The city is in ruin! How many people loses their house? Wounded? Crippled? _Lost their lives?_ " The more he talked the harder Spider-Man's tone is. Everyone could sense it.

"Spider-Man, breath," Daredevil stepped up and said to the young vigilante.

"Shut up!" Spider-Man seemed to not even recognize his fellow vigilante pal, Daredevil. "This has to stop. Stop! Stop this stupid war, you want to fight? You have disagreement? Why don't you fight behind the scene? Wasn't that what public figures like to do? Diss each others in Instagram or something!"

Tony and Steve still glared at each other, "Hear that, Steve? Enough of your stupid struggle for power and just agree, we don't any more casualties."

"You're the one who started the war, Tony. If there's anyone to be blamed it's your fault to start this whole things," Steve said evenly.

Tony snorted in mock amusement, "Me? The one who started the war was you, the moment you chose that murderer to be called friend rather than the guy who had been nothing but helping you since you arrive at this era."

The two already took a step forward, ready to fight when they found their feet were webbed to the ground.

" _Don't. Move._ " Only two words but everyone could feel the significance of those words. Spider-Man's voice is already completely took a different turn from his earlier tone.

Even Daredevil had a hard time to believe it was coming from the usually cheery vigilante who often dropped by the Hell's Kitchen for a short conversation, Daredevil shifted to expect anything, he's truly afraid that Spider-Man would take some extreme step.

"Hear me out. You guys have a pair of functioning ears and brilliant brain right? Great. Because I think, I didn't make myself clear enough, when I said _stop fighting._ " Spider-Man's tone faltered, "God... You guys are heroes for everyone. Stop this, seriously. You guys... You guys are _my heroes_. I expect the next time New York is in ruin is because of some villains or another alien invasion- not because of the heroes fought _because of their egos!_ " the vigilante sat down, exhaustion seeped from his voice.

Everyone went silent, no one could refute the vigilante's words. They _noticed_ the things they caused... but no one truly had the time to stop and reflect about what they're doing, they had no time because they were too focused fighting, defending themselves... But had they ever thought of defending the citizens? That question punched them hard.

Daredevil had stepped behing Spider-Man to rub the younger vigilante's back comfortingly, obviously hearing the frantic and dangerously rapid heartbeats from the younger man.

"... Do you guys know how many people in trouble I encountered while in my way here?" Spider-Man asked.

No one replied to him, only staring back blankly.

"Fifteen times..." Spider-Man continued. "I had to stop fifteen times to help those in need. In that short trip from Queens to this place. Ironically, none of them were in trouble because of criminals. Some of them were trapped in a car, some almost died because the building gave up on them, some trapped in a burning building, some almost fell off of the bridge, things falling, and many more. No crime. Because even the criminals were afraid of the raging conflict between superheroes."

"One good thing... in exchange for a hundred bad things," Everyone looked away, it's hard to know what they're thinking of.

"What will you gain, man?" Spider-Man asked, now there's nothing but exhaustion in his voice. "Victory? The pride after being told you won? Proving your point? How many things have you lost?" Spider-Man stood up, brushing off Daredevil's comforting hand.

"Many things," Tony stated.

"... Many things," Steve agreed.

"And that's why you couldn't bear to stop?" Spider-Man said. "It's hard to stop when you already lost so many things?" he laughed. "Is it until you completely lost everything that you will stop? You guys said you lost so many things, have you seen how much the citizens' losses? It's better quit while you're ahead. Now is the best time."

The two sides looked at each other, Spider-Man's words sank in and their eyes already filled with uncertainity about this war. Seeing that, Spider-Man nodded and turned back.

"I'm disappointed in you all, trust me when even the most hated vigilante such as me said that... Pretty much everyone does, goodbye," Spider-Man shot up his web and swung off.

Johnny flamed on, "You know what guys? I'm also pretty much disappointed in you all," He floated. "The Act is stupid and the war is even stupider. Grow up! I'm done with this shit, Reed, if you still want to continue on the stupid Act and heck, this war, Do it. Do as much as you like! I don't give a fuck anymore. Least I could do, I'll just secretly made another rocket, take Sue with me, and go to the Space, living and procreating with aliens. I'm done with this! Bye everyone!" The teen said sarcastly to everyone present and flew off to the direction Spider-Man swung off and helped Spider-Man to help those in need.

It wasn't long before some other superheroes appeared at some distance away, also helping the people in trouble, the rest of them probably spread to other directions. Evacuating and treating those in need. No one talked aside for some low whispering when needed. Spider-Man did not acknowledge them, no one expect him to.

The Civil War is resolved just like that.

-.-.-.-.-


End file.
